


Beat once my heart, and then lie still.

by SilverInStars



Series: Bingo 2018 (MCU) [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, POV Steve Rogers, Past Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 12:41:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14811560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverInStars/pseuds/SilverInStars
Summary: Nebula was hovering around Tony again, Steve watched them from the edge of the invisible hemisphere the two had carved around themselves.*INFINITY WAR SPOILERS*





	Beat once my heart, and then lie still.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the first free space slot on my Mcu bingo card

Nebula was hovering around Tony again, Steve watched them from the edge of the invisible hemisphere the two had carved around themselves. Nebula was not an easy woman to read, harder than Natasha in some aspects. She wore her grief and pain like an ice cold battle armor, and Steve wondered if that was where the similarities lay. 

Tony was smirking at something she said, and Steve, by the same feeling in his gut that used to drag him to the lab at late hours with a plate of food all those years ago, could differentiate its frail outlines, the way his lower lip trembled, brown eyes blackened by death. 

Tony wore the tatters of his new armor with his usual regality. Steve swallowed, the evening light reflected off the gold coating, glinting around Tony’s shoulders and thighs. He reached out to run a gauntleted hand through his hair, and Steve watched transfixed, as the particles washed off him in synchronicity, revealing a calloused palm that twisted into his dark locks. 

The jagged edges where Thanos had ripped into the armor lined the frayed material of Tony’s jeans, and beyond that was delicate skin painted in blues and purples by a heavy fist. Steve’s hand reached out to trace the slope of Tony’s side into the air, but Nebula’s eye, swerving, and inhuman fell on him in warning and Steve had to curl his hand back to his chest.

Tony looked like a fallen Fae king. He seemed to sense Nebula’s dissatisfaction and his head turned to Steve’s direction. Fallen king, with the heart of a grieving father, Tony had looked to Steve like this after many a battle, but the energy that always seemed to crackle in his veins, thrumming under the expanse of his metal and flesh shell in a constant state of manic and agitation had been extinguished. Instead the Tony who returned Steve’s desperate searching, was emptied of everything that gave him life and warmth. The warmth that Steve had always craved from him, burning fiercely beside the cold that always haunted Steve. But now Tony had a different energy brewing in him, he raised a brow at Steve in open challenge, and Steve could see, in the parts that Tony could never hide, a new emotion festered, it was cold, callous and vengeful. His aura had not diminished, but gone was the magnificence and flair, in its place fell the iron fist of a father who would avenge his child.  And Steve remembered, that even ice could burn. 

Bucky was gone now, Steve’s last connection to the past, gone into the dust under his feet, and Steve resisted the urge to crawl on his knees and cradle the scattered specs into his arms. How many times was he to lose a brother, to pick himself up after having his closest friend vanish before his eyes, and to join battle once more as Captain America? How much did the fates want from him till they would tire of the weary husk that remained. 

“Rogers,” Tony said. 

And Steve knew, even though the bones of his will had been scrapped of his flesh, the determined set to Tony’s shoulders, the fury that sung from every pore of his body, feeding Steve’s own wrath, would set them off again. 

“We will bring them back, your family and mine.” Tony said, and maybe it should be Steve’s line  _ ‘We don’t trade lives’  _ But Tony had always been the wind of change that carried them through, Steve would have to corral the forces, lead them, inspire their spirits to stay strong in the face of post-apocalyptic mourning. But now, Steve’s soul yearned to hide, to cry, to beat down on the earth and ask it why.  

“Our family,” Steve said.

Tony stared at him, and then passed him, once again pulling Steve away from the past and into the future, 

“Let’s go, Cap”


End file.
